The guide does no such thing. And at The Infants’ Home, we don’t ban birthday cakes either.

The new edition of Staying Healthy is a valuable resource for services to ensure they have the most up-to-date and well-researched information on minimising the risk of cross infection.

It is a best practice guide, NOT a must do.

The guide says services can make their own decisions about having birthday cakes and blowing out candles.

What we do at The Infants’ Home

For the record, we make our decisions based on the different context and information available to us at any one time. For example:

If a child has a runny nose, there is NO large candle-blowing ceremony. Instead, we might have a small cupcake and candle. The celebration goes ahead.

For ethnic and religious considerations, our practice is to celebrate a child’s birthday – as we would any rite of passage – in whatever way is culturally relevant.

This may or may not include blowing out birthday candles on a cake.

Recommended reading

So while the sillier sections of our media refuse to let the facts get in the way of a good “story”, we recommend you read Staying Healthy: Preventing infectious diseases in early childhood education and care services.